Libbits

"My babies are on the street corner with their pants hanging down,
dealing drugs ... We have lost our respect. ... Black folks would
have got a better deal had the South won the Civil War." ... "This
[removing the Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse] is
not the first time that carpetbaggers and scalawags have come into
the South to try to separate white folks and black folks." -- H.K.
Edgerton, former head of the Asheville North Carolina NAACP.

[Leonardo DiCaprio:] "I shouldn't be eating hamburgers, because the
methane gas cows release is the No.1 contributor to the destruction
of the ozone layer; and the No. 1 reason they destroy the rainforest
is to make grazing ground for cattle. So it's very ironic that I eat
beef, being the environmentalist that I am. But then again, if I
ordered the tuna sandwich, I would be promoting the fact that they
have large tuna nets that capture innocent little dolphins ..."

DiCaprio's film, The Beach -- which finished in a humiliating second
place to Scream 3 -- has been met by strong criticism over the damage
that its filming did to one of Thailand's most pristine beaches.

Remember when Warren Beatty was flirting with the idea of running for
president?

Half of Hollywood and most of the press corps turned up at a charity
dinner, simply on the whiff of a rumor that Beatty might state his
intentions. Folks didn't really want Warren Beatty for president, of
course. What they really wanted was Bulworth, the senator he played
in the movie of the same name, the role of a politician who had the
guts to be himself and say what he believed in. [...]

... [J]ournalists love [Sen. John McCain] because he provides a great
contest, not to mention great sound bites. He is the appealing
come-from-behind rebel, the guy who's not afraid to take on his own
party.

Washington, Feb. 16 -- President Clinton said today that it doesn't
bother him that GOP presidential candidates have been using his name
as a dirty word in their heated primary contest.

Asked at a White House news conference today what he thought of his
name being used as an insult, Clinton said: "I have a lot of sympathy
with Governor Bush and Senator McCain. I mean it's hard for them to
figure out what to run on.

"They can't run against the longest economic expansion in history or
the lowest crime rate in 30 years or the lowest welfare rolls in 30
years," Clinton said. "Or the progress America has made at building
peace around the world."

Clinton wrote off the swipes as so much standard Republican fare.

"They're playing to an electorate most of whom did not vote for
me," Clinton said.

[emphasis added. Maybe for once, this guy really meant what he
said. In fact, "most of" the electorate "did not vote for"
him. If I recall my computations correctly, he won the votes of about
25% of the electorate. Of course, he didn't mean that. But he
does want you to believe that he deserves credit for "the longest
economic expansion in history or the lowest crime rate in 30 years or
the lowest welfare rolls in 30 years ... or the progress America has
made at building peace around the world." Maybe the name of James
Bovard's new book should be A Legacy of Lies. -- ed.]

NONE DARE CALL IT EXTORTION

Berlin, Feb. 17 -- Representatives of Nazi-era slave laborers from
around the world met German officials today to seek an end to a
bitter row over how a $5 billion compensation fund should be divided
up. [...]

Prompted by threats of class action suits against them, some of
Germany's largest blue chip companies proposed the fund a year ago.
The German government has since said it will pay half the fund's
endowment. [...]

Around 200 firms have joined the initiative, launched by major groups
including Siemens AG, Deutsche Bank and Volkswagen AG last February.
German government chief negotiator Otto Lambsdorff has expressed
disappointment that hundreds more companies have not come forward,
saying a sense of collective responsibility should prompt even newly
created firms to join up.

"The right attitude is to say, 'We didn't employ forced labor, we
were only formed 10 years ago but we believe German industry has a
collective moral responsibility,'" Lambsdorff said in an interview
with the Berlin newspaper Der Tagesspiegel.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The nation's top law enforcement officials
acknowledged on Wednesday serious challenges finding the electronic
vandals who shut down major Internet sites last week, but they also
described "fast-developing leads."

They said the hackers involved were sophisticated enough to falsify
their digital fingerprints. Attorney General Janet Reno said such a
disguise technique "makes it difficult, and sometimes impossible, to
hold the perpetrator criminally accountable."

"I would simply say that we are taking the attacks very seriously and
that we will simply do everything in our power to identify those
responsible and bring them to justice," Reno told a Senate panel.

FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, who also testified, said there were
"fast-developing leads as we speak, and hopefully we can provide more
details in coming days." He said FBI field offices in five cities
have opened investigations into the attacks: Los Angeles, San
Francisco, Atlanta, Boston and Seattle. More agents in other cities
and overseas are also involved.

Reno and Freeh also conceded important shortcomings coordinating the
myriad government agencies and public and private experts who help
investigate high-tech crimes. "We're not doing so good," admitted
Freeh, adding that cooperation was improving.

The FBI also urged Congress on Wednesday to consider expanding use of
federal racketeering "RICO" laws - traditionally used against the
mafia and drug cartels - to apply against organized and persistent
hackers. It also urged Congress to lower the $5,000 minimum in
damages that victim companies must suffer before attackers can be
prosecuted under federal computer crime laws.

Freeh said lawmakers should consider "whether some of this activity,
which goes beyond a single episode of fraud or hacking, gets into the
realm of enterprise criminal activity."

"RICO was intended to get gangsters," said Jennifer Granick, a
California lawyer who has represented hackers. "Now, it's getting a
bunch of kids in black concert T-shirts." [...]

"It is my duty to leave nothing undone that I may lawfully do, to
pull down this administration. ... They who, from indifference, or
with their eyes open, persist in hugging the traitor to their bosom,
deserve to be insulted ... deserve to be slaves, with no other music
to sooth them but the clank of the chains which they have put on
themselves and given to their offspring." -- John Randolph, from an
1826 speech to the US Senate denouncing President John Quincy Adams

BEIJING -- China may set up a special police force to protect tax
collectors from a growing wave of violent attacks which has left 20
dead and hundreds injured in recent years, state media has reported.

Despite two years of efforts by the State Administration of Taxation
(SAT) to order enterprises to pay overdue taxes, more than US$3.6
billion (S$6.1 billion) was still owing at the end of last year, the
Business Weekly said.

It said billions more had been lost through "rampant tax evasion".
[...]

One taxation bureau chief said: "Even police will not help if a
turbulent mass refuses to pay taxes."

Presidential contender Bill Bradley fired a few rounds at Vice
President Al Gore's gun control policies as he took the battle for
the Democratic nomination to New England on Thursday.

At a community center in Dorchester, one of Boston's poorer
neighborhoods where crime remains a presence and adolescents can get
a gun more cheaply than a pair of sneakers, Bradley reiterated his
gun proposals.

He called for the registration and licensing of all handguns,
insisted that gun dealers not operate in residential neighborhoods
and called for trigger locks and background checks at gun shows.

Bradley then told the mostly black audience of neighborhood activists
and school children that under Gore's gun control policies, only new
handguns, not the 65 million handguns already in the United States,
would be licensed.

"(Gore's) response to my proposal was: 'It's impractical. It's too
hard to do.' Well, I guess that his view of what leadership is," said
the former senator from New Jersey.

"What if Franklin Roosevelt had said Social Security was too hard to
do? Or what if Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s said this whole voting
rights thing, this whole civil rights legislation, desegregating
public accommodations -- too hard -- I don't know that I want to
tackle that one," Bradley said, adding, "A president should tackle
hard issues."

The United States should brace for keeping its troops in Bosnia and
Kosovo indefinitely as long as Slobodan Milosevic holds power in
Yugoslavia, the outgoing supreme NATO commander cautioned Congress
today.

Gen. Wesley Clark brushed off repeated questions on when Americans
might expect to see the peacekeeping troops brought home for good.

Except for being driven from Kosovo, Milosevic's forces and military
equipment suffered little damage from last year's 78-day NATO
bombardment, Clark said. Now, Milosevic is seeking to consolidate his
authority and should be regarded as continuing to pose a threat to
the Balkans, the general added.

Until Milosvevic is removed from power and brought to trial on war
crime charges, "We're not going to see a resolution of the problem,"
Clark told the House Armed Services Committee.